The day I dread more than flying coach is almost here. No, it’s not Christ mas, Super Bowl Sunday or Ramadan, but every festival you’ve ever celebrated, rolled into one explosive package.
Sunday is Valentine’s Day. Stay under the bed if you value your sanity, New York.
The annual holiday dedicated to cheesy, insincere sentiment, wilting flowers, flimsy undergarments and bad poetry is fast approaching. But I won’t be celebrating.
I was brought to earth about the underlying vein of venality that runs through the day of Godiva and Hallmark by a friend from Manhattan. She told me about her anticipation, bordering on lunacy, as her first V-Day with her new husband approached.
This gal made reservations. She made handmade chocolates. She bought enough flowers to fill a mausoleum, and actually lost five pounds in order to squeeze into the skimpy red nightie she’d purchased at Victoria’s Secret and wore, like a human tartlet, for her man to see as he walked in the door. Yes, my friends are insane. Needless to say, she suited up in her Valentine’s armor. And she waited.
And waited.
Her efforts were met not with the shock and awe she craved. They were met with divorce papers. For Valentine’s Day, especially in this city of too many and too much — too many chicks, too much anticipation, too much drama — has earned another name: Dump Day.
“I was such a maniac,” my pal says now. I’ll leave out the expletives. Let’s just say her man ran for the hills.
What is it about the holiday that makes otherwise intelligent adults behave like frantic toddlers on a sugar rush? And, more to the point, why do we attach so much need and expectation to any random day, putting our self-worth on the line in pursuit of a bonbon?
My pal is not the only woman I know who was let go by her boyfriend/husband/married lover on or near the day of love. She fell into the trap of being unable to be satisfied — making her man feel woefully inadequate as she attached far too much significance to his every grunt and syllable. Others, of course, take the opposite route, which is filled with just as many pitfalls.
Take me. So turned off am I by the commercially canned words of love that pop out of every store, bodega and boutique around Valentine’s Day, my husband is more likely to get a fight than a hug. But if he, for one moment, fails to bring me my slippers and a martini, he’s a dead man.
I have a solution to the Valentine’s Dilemma.
On the big day, give me something I really want. Rub my feet. Hand me the remote. I know you can do it.
Give me a moment’s peace. Take the kid out for a few hours. Turn off “Star Trek.” Let me watch the sappy movies to which I’m secretly addicted, like “Titanic” (above). I’ll just deny it later.
And I’ll take one chocolate. OK, two. I’ll even get you one.
And last, let’s do this in March. Or April. Or both.
It’s Valentine’s Day, not a massacre. Deep breaths, New Yorkers. You’ll have to go through this again next year.
O’s terror team in the twilight zone
Watching Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s advisory council meet in the city last week, one got the feeling that the squad enlisted to save us from terrorists is out to lunch. I hope it was liquid.
Mayor Bloomberg drew stares when he warned of a nuclear attack on New York if federal funding is cut. But Planet Janet, who only just added the word “terrorist” to her vocabulary, ignored him, yammering instead about the threat from Mexico. Who knew?
Former Sen. Gary Hart (remember him?) was at a different event altogether, lecturing about protecting enemies’ civil liberties — a lofty concern in a time of war.
So it came as little surprise when President Obama threw a snit last weekend, and said he’s still considering holding the trials of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Co. in Manhattan, costing taxpayers a billion and threatening lives.
Maybe he’s feeling stubborn. Or he truly hates us. But our safety is nothing to yammer about. A military tribunal is not just the best way to go. It’s the only way.
12-shtup frauds
It’s not fair! Why do Tiger and Letterman get a free pass?
It’s the ratings, stupid.
An early competitor in the sex-addiction sweepstakes, former ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips, whose craving for a bizarro woman was eclipsed by Tiger’s Herculean appetites, has graduated from sex rehab to Matt Lauer’s therapy couch.
Unlike his megawatt fellow perverts, this cable guy lost his job and maybe his marriage for the love of an unglued assistant.
This left Phillips with no choice but to beg forgiveness on network TV.
He said — big surprise — that he was powerless in the face of his disease. “You’re broken inside. You’ve got a hole that you’ve tried to fill, whether it was with alcohol or drugs or sex or gambling with whatever.”
Mmm-kay . . .
I wish guys would get real and call the sickness of spoiled, rich and oversexed men what it is: Fun while it lasted.
Fat is in the fire for Michelle
Step away from the Ding Dongs.
Michelle Obama is on an obesity kick. But she’s sending mixed messages — and shaming her own daughters — in a bipolar bid to make your kids thin.
Mrs. O has boasted that she nursed daughters Sasha, 8, and Malia, 11, prompting breastfeeding advocacy types to urge her to use that in her anti-fat campaign. But Supermommy dropped a bombshell late last month: Breast milk did nothing to prevent her young ‘uns from getting a wee bit pleasantly plump.
In a move destined to propel the first daughters into fits of bulimia, Mrs. O announced, “I thought my kids were perfect. They are and will always be, but” — this is a huge “but” — “[a doctor] warned that he was concerned that something was getting off balance” with the girls’ bodies. The president cut the euphemism, spilling to ABC earlier that Malia “was getting a little chubby.” Calling Dr. Spock!
After getting more involved in the girls’ food intake, Mrs. O says now things are “on track.”
I dislike fat as much as the next gym-goer. But her obsessions make me nauseous. Which may be the point.
Does Tiger still got that swing?
Tiger Woods reportedly wants to stick his nose out of the hole in which he’s been hiding, groundhog-like, and do what comes naturally. I’m talking about golf.
But will enforced chastity help his game?
Tiger’s wife, Elin, is ready to make up with the man who betrayed her, over and over. Cleaning crews have been spotted outside the couple’s Florida mansion, and a good thing when you consider the questionable cast of cuties with whom Tiger’s been linked.
Tiger’s caddy, meanwhile, insists he’s not ready to play. But it seems just a matter of time before Tiger hits the links with his new sexual sobriety. I hope, for Elin’s sake, Tiger’s skills survive his declawing.